


Penumbra

by JoelOS



Series: Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anyway there's banter, Banter, Conspiracy Theories, Fanon, I don't actually know, Lore - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant, Origin Story, Plot, Pre-Recall, Sort Of, The Sacred Trinity of Writing, i think, it's what i live for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-01-16 19:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21276515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoelOS/pseuds/JoelOS
Summary: "I was just letting you catch your breath," Sombra quips."Sounds to me like you're wastin' it.""Whatever, cowboy. Try to keep up."The story of how an annoying cowboy got mixed up in Sombra's affairs, and how she, along with all of Mexico, has to live with the consequences.





	1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

Rain clatters mercilessly against the tiled roof, and four stories above the street, crouching next to a chimney, Sombra is next to invisible in the darkness.

The streetlights highlight the falling streaks before they pelt the cobblestone ground. She’s up on the lee-side of the chimney and mostly dry, but the chilling wind pierces her clothing and toys with her sleeves.

She tightens the hood around her face without taking her eyes off the street below. Water pours past the edge of the roof as the rain intensifies. What liquid is caught on her hood drips down to her face. It doesn’t bother her; the rain means the citizens stay inside, and the fewer people out tonight, the better for her. Lightning momentarily lights the sky, shortly thereafter followed by rumbling thunder. In the distance, the shell of the LumériCo pyramid towers above the century old houses of Dorado, a digital dagger stabbed through the city’s analogue heart.

Supposedly, the project will at some point result in free energy for most of Dorado, but if Sombra knows anything, it’s that the future is not now, and that nothing is free. On the surface, it isn’t too hard to see who benefits from this. So far, those with the biggest grins were the fat cats in the capital - and Sombra would come for them too, eventually - but there was still some vital variables missing from the equation. LumériCo are hiding something hiding, and Sombra has to know what their end goal with the Dorado construction site is. No company makes their own product free out of the goodness of their heart. Especially not a foreign one whose level of goodwill makes Genghis Khan look like Mother Theresa.

There’s movement at the end of the street, and Sombra snaps out of her thoughts. A dark figure turns a corner and moves in her direction, slower than a run, but faster than a walk.

“Gotcha.” Her mouth curves into a smile, and she pushes away from the chimney. Wary of the treacherous slipperiness of the roof, she drops down over the edge onto the balcony below with ease.

The cloaked figure makes its way down the street, sticking close to the wall, one arm raised to protect against its face from the rain. Every so often, it glances over its shoulder.

Not up, though. Thinking the heavens will bring only rain, the person is wholly unprepared for Sombra’s aerial assault.  
Cat-like, she leaps from the balcony, and with considerable momentum slams into the back of its torso. The instant thereafter, the figure is sprawling on the ground, face-down, and she’s on top and in control as the victim’s shout is drowned out by another crash of thunder.

The individual starts to struggle, hands trying to grip at something, anything, but with his scalp in a firm grip, she forces the head down into the gutter so that he can’t see her. With her other hand, she pulls a gun and speaks, “_Quietecito_, or I’ll kill you, right now.” A barrel to the temple calms most people, and so it is with this one too. Realising the hopelessness of the situation and the futility of his resistance, the movements cease and his arms go limp at his sides. Sombra quickly pins the right arm to the side of the body with her right knee. The left she positions squarely above the spine. Even just a nudge there will cause enough pain to keep him still, though not exactly quiet.

Even so, Sombra can sense the suppressed rage quivering beneath her. She’ll have to get rid of that first.

“They’ll hear you shoot me, and they’ll be here in seconds. You can’t make it,” a man’s voice says, challenging her. He wants to sound confident.

She might actually enjoy this.

“I’ve got a suppressor, and the rain will mask the rest.”

“No it won’t, and they will come.” He’s desperate to believe his own words.

”And I’m sure they’ll scoop your splattered brain up in no time.” He struggles against her restraint and tries lifting his head, but she pushes it down into the ground again. Begrudgingly, he stops resisting.

“Not the date you were expecting eh, _amor_? Does your _chica_ know why you’re out this late?” A smile plays on her lips. Arranging this had been too easy. A fake profile, some doctored photos - not of _her_, obviously - and horny Carlos here had been practically begging to see her. “’Cause from what I found, she lives on the other side of town.” He had probably been thinking he’d won the jackpot, only to now find out he had unknowingly been playing Russian roulette. She almost wishes she could have see his face when he realised. Self-assurance turning into despondency was always a highligh for her. “I really don’t know why every man is so eager to stick his _pija_ in a mousetrap, but hey, I’m not complaining. And if you play along, neither will you,” she sing-songs.

“What do you want?”

_Bingo_. Right to the point.

“Everything,” she says. “And you’ll give it to me.” She blinks twice with her right eye, and her vision flickers for a moment. “You went inside the LumériCo plant. What are they planning?”

“I-, I don’t know.”

She jams his head back into the cobblestones roughly, as a reminder that this isn’t an occasion to play dumb.

“Bullshit. You were there for hours.”

“Only in the e-entrance. They made me wait in the entrance. No one can go inside.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I swear! I’m just a courier!”

Obviously, LumériCo is hiding something shady. It has to be shady, since even she hasn’t managed to figure out what it is. Yet. But whatever it is, it spells trouble for Dorado and its inhabitants. By shifting her weight slightly, her knee starts pressing down on his vertebrae ever so slightly, to show she means business.

“Courier? Of what?”

“Ahh-I just gave them stuff, I’m a nobody, I swear! Please don’t hurt me!” She bangs his head against the ground. He cries out, but she shushes him.

“Don’t tell me what to do. _Ever_.” By now he is sobbing. They always do that when they realise there’s no way out. “What ‘stuff’? Who from?” When he doesn’t immediately respond, she reminds him of the gun pointed at his head with a none too gentle press. “Who’s sending stuff to Lumérico?”

He keeps sobbing, but in that defeatist way that tells her he’s about to spill the beans. She makes sure he’s pinned to the ground and can’t move. The rain pelts them both as the seconds pass. Finally, he speaks.

“Abrahán. Abrahán De la Cruz.”

_De la Cruz_? De la Cruz is just a thug, and compared to the elephantine LumériCo, the man is a metaphorical bug. With the brain of an actual bug. Why would LumériCo do business with a lowlife like him, when they might just as easily crush him beneath their multinational boot? What use is he to them? Sombra’s mind races, considering the possible answers. To her dissatisfaction, she there aren’t any that convince her.

“What is he sending them? Money? Weapons?” Sombra can’t fathom they’d have trouble getting that from anywhere. The head beneath her shakes a negative. Could they be trying to remove Los Muertos? “Drugs?”

“No,” he says between sobs.

“What then?” Sombra growls, growing more impatient.

“Omnics.”

Astonished, Sombra blinks. _Omnics_? That can’t be right. No way anyone could, or would, smuggle _omnics_ through Dorado. First off, she would know of any such operation. Secondly, why would they have someone smuggle them, instead of simply bringing them in themselves? Third, omnics are neither loved nor numerous in Mexico, with the closest omnium located in Detroit, a couple of thousand kilometres to the north, and most omnic-human cultural exchanges coming in the form of physical abuse to the former.

“Don’t lie to me.” She smacks his head against the street once more. “It can’t be omnics.”

“It’s true, I swear! Th-they aren’t regular omnics. Some don’t move, like they’re dead. The rest seem like they’ve been purged or something.”

“Purged? What do you mean?”

“They don’t talk, and can’t hear you. B-but they live. Like zombies. I heard them move, inside the crates. I even opened one, to check, that’s why I know. They said not to, but I did.”

“How does he get them?”

“Who?”

“Abrahán, _bobo,_” she says, pushing her knee harder into his back for emphasis.

“Ah, stop! I don’t know, I promise! I don’t, I only did it one time. I won’t do it again, on my life!”

“Fine, I’ll make it easier for you. Where did you meet him?”

“Outside the city, to the, uh, east.”

Sombra can’t not sigh. Jesus, he’s so clueless he can't tell his ass from his dick. “You mean west.” East of Dorado there’s only sea. “Unless you were in a boat?”

“No. I mean yes, west,” he snivels. “Was out in the badlands. Are you going to save them?”

“Save them?”

“The omnics.”

“Ha! Good one.”

“They shouldn’t be like that. They’re doing something bad to them.”

“_Wey_, you’re the one who brought them there, not me.”

“I told you everything, will you let me go? So I can help them?”

“No.” She blinks twice with her left eye, and there’s a tick in her ear. All done.

“No? But why not?”

“Because you would interfere with my plans.”

And with that, she pushes his chin into the ground to force his mouth closed before violently pressing her knee down on his spine with as much force she can exert.

His muted screams last for half a minute before he passes out from the pain. Quickly, she gets up and sprays the Muertos tag on the wall next to him before unloading a couple of bullets into his back. Then, before any nosy would-be witnesses can come out, she bolts.

She didn’t lie. He won’t be complaining.


	2. Chapter 1: Illusory Superiority

**CHAPTER 1: ILLUSORY SUPERIORITY**

* * *

Olivia Colomar is four years old the first time she is punished, for hiding another child’s toy in her bed. She is told her parents won’t come back for her unless she behaves. At six, when a girl reveals Olivia stole _pan dulce_ from the kitchen, she retaliates by spiking the girl’s water with dish soap. That marks the first time an adult hits her. A few weeks later, a loving couple arrives, handing out toys to the children. Olivia sees them talking with the head nurse, Dolores, and only gets scornful looks from the three of them. They take the soap-drinking girl away in a shower of kisses. By the age of eight, she has earned the reputation as the biggest troublemaker in the orphanage, and by far the least remorseful. Accordingly, she is banned from attending any events and using anything she could possibly consider enjoyable. The nurses talk loudly about how no parents would want a nasty girl like her, and threaten to tell her parents to stay away another year. They force her to learn psalms by heart and chide her in front of the other kids for any mistakes, no matter how tiny. At night, she slinks into the room with the computer - there is only one in the whole orphanage, and it’s one of those older ones with a physical screen, practically an antique, a fact Olivia is completely unaware of. Her first browser search is “_when parants return_”. The second one is “_how can i maek dolores sic_”.

When she turns ten, she becomes the child who has been there the longest. 

And she is eleven years old the day she sneaks into the the head nurse’s office, gets into the password-protected files, and learns that both her parents died in the Omnic Crisis.

***

Hacking is the same, whether it’s done on people or computers. It’s about finding and exploiting loopholes in the code or the mind, and leaving the victim none the wiser. It is, like everything in life, about power.

Men’s expectations was the first loophole she learned to make use of, and one that still serves her very well. Barely anyone has ever viewed her as a threat until it was too late. Only once was she figured out, with dire consequences. But Sombra knows men like Abrahán - the one she is waiting for right now - way too well; Mexico is filled with them.

Men who are not powerful in any meaningful sense of the word, but convince themselves they are.

The evening crowd are milling about in the Plaza de Armas of Dorado. _Mariachis_ are stood next to the central fountain, their cheery tune and cheesy songs providing a pleasant atmosphere as people socialise with their friends and neighbours. Sombra is idly snacking on a _pan dulce_, feigning disinterest in her surroundings.

Soon, her waiting pays off.

A man in an impeccable white suit appears, and Sombra’s eyes narrow. Combed, slick black hair, a thin moustache and round cheeks._ Abrahán de la Cruz_. His eyes are small and wedged on either side of an obtuse nose. People near him go silent and part to either side as he carves his way through the crowd. He seems to both relish and ignore the attention. There is an aura about him: A posture meant to evoke _caudillo_. Sombra notices a gold ring in one of his ears. Not very tall, but taller than her, and slightly overweight, he reeks of confidence. 

But Sombra isn’t taken in by it. While most eyes are on this man, Sombra might be the only one noticing the other man. A few paces behind Abrahán is a man sweating in much a simpler, badly fitting black suit, and whose cheap deodorant she can practically smell from across the square. He’s as buff as any _Muerto_, but without the visible tattoos. A bodyguard. Unable to move past people as effectively as his boss, he is having trouble keeping up. _Perfect_.

Sombra pushes away from the wall she was leaning against, and starts on a trajectory that will intercept Abrahán’s. The band begins playing a new song. Sombra pulls out a phone and holds it to her ear.  
He’s close, she can hear the _clack clack clack_ with each step of his expensive shoes. Just a few metres away now. He’ll pass right by her in a moment. She takes a deep breath.

And starts yelling into her phone in Spanish.

“You did what!? You worthless, lying piece of shit, I thought I could trust you!” People around her turn to look. Just how she wants it. “I told you to stay away from Ramona! She’s a fucking whore, and you-” Sombra whips around furiously and steps right into the path of that white suit.

He barely stumbles from the crash, while her phone is sent flying - intentionally - in a wide arc through the air before breaking into a million pieces upon hitting the ground. Sombra ends up sprawled on the ground, breath knocked right out of her.

Fine. That’ll help her acting. She gasps for air while pretending to look for whoever crashed into her. As soon as her eyes find him, silence is replaced by a torrent of words. 

“_¡¿Cuál es tu pinche pedo, hijoeputa?!_”

He looks surprised, shocked, almost, but after only an instant, anger flashes across is face.

“Shut up, girl, and get your stupid telenovela out of my way or you’ll regret it.”

“You broke my phone, you fucking _fresa_,” she spits back immediately. 

“Be glad it wasn’t your pretty little nose, girl.” A condescending smile appears on his lips, as if he derives pleasure from the thought at following through on his threat. People have gone completely silent and are openly staring at the scene she’s caused, and when the band notices the crowd directing their attention elsewhere, they stop playing. 

Sombra gets to her feet and in his face quickly, grabbing at his lapel and collar. “You’re gonna compensate me!”

“Don’t. Touch. Me.” He’s got sour breath and nose hair like a hippo, but the most repulsive thing about him is his smug superiority. _Fresa_. “Unless you want a broken nose, you’re getting _nada_.”  
Assured that this display of power is enough, he throws her away with surprising strength and she once again ends up in a heap on the ground, her lungs taking another hit and leaving her gasping. She defiantly stares back at his exquisitely punchable face. But in the corner of her eye, she notices a figure emerging from the transfixed crowd. His lapdog. Time to go.

Through her teeth, she wheezes, “Whatever. Asshole.” And before the bodyguard can reach her, she gets up and hurries into the crowd, despite their best attempts to stay clear of her.  
Rounding a corner, she finds herself in an alleyway. She scales the brick wall on her right to a second floor balcony, and without looking back, opens the wooden doors and gets inside, slumping against the wall to recover her breath, out of sight. 

Less than a minute later, she can hear voices echoing in the alley beneath the balcony.

“You moron, you’re supposed to keep idiots like that away from me.”

“Yes boss. Sorry.”

“You’re not half as sorry as you’ll be if this happens again.”

“Yes boss. I mean no, boss. I understand.” Sombra suppresses a snort. That man feeds all his oxygen to his muscles.

“I’ll have one of your hands if this happens again, _comprendes_? Then you can pay me to have a shitty omnic limb, just like everyone else. _Idiota_.” She can practically hear him squirming beneath his boss. “_Vamos_, let’s go.” They move out of the alley.

In the distance, the _mariachis_ start playing a new song, not nearly as in sync as they were before the commotion. Soon, the sound of the hustle and bustle returns, twice as lively as before as people gossip about what just occurred.

With a flick of her wrist, Sombra conjures a holoscreen, and after a few more rapid hand movements, she’s tracking Abrahán’s movement in real-time on multiple screens. He heads north, through the streets of Dorado he thinks he’s safe on, taking a left, and then a right.

She found a loophole in his confidence: He never even realised she stuck a tiny device to the inside of his suit lapel. With it, she will be able track him so minutely she’ll be able to tell whether he’s taking a leak or a dump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know, it's just Sombra so far. That'll change in the near future though.


	3. Chapter 2: Synchronicity

Fifteen is the age at which children in Mexico are legally considered young adults, and thus ineligible for public childcare programmes. With the Omnic Crisis still only a few years in the past, there are still too many children with no one to look after them for fifteen-year-olds to live gratis. Thus, Olivia’s _quinceañera_ consists of her being unceremoniously ejected from the one home she has known with a bag and a single change of clothes and sleeping in an alley. The only celebrations are carried out by the nurses, who share a bottle of tequila and stay awake late into the night.

Olivia sleeps outside for a week, stealing food from understaffed _supermercados_. This time, she makes sure no one snitches. The first good fortune comes her way when the owner of a cybercafé detects her bypassing the firewalls and tries accessing the establishment’s financial details. The owner says his name is Antonio, but his username is _crudoAnarco365_. She tells him. He corners her, and when she expects to be hit or slapped, he does neither. He is not mean.

His password is _ch31aym0ta_. She doesn't tell him she knows that.

He lets her sleep in the back, with the servers, and gives her food if she watches the place while he’s gone. Mostly noodles. He’s away for an hour or two, a few days of the week. Shortly after her arrival, the snacks that were on display are all gone, but Antonio doesn’t seem to notice. Sombra no longer goes to sleep hungry. Any customers are few and far between, but whenever there are any, she makes sure to monitor their activity closely. There is nothing for her to do but use the computers. Games are boring - Olivia doesn’t enjoy losing, and hasn’t the patience to learn them, so she plays at other things. Sometimes Antonio shows her a trick or two. She laughs when he DDOS’s the president’s personal website and replaces the logo with a looping clip of a turd giving the finger while dancing in a pile of cash, surrounded by hookers, and they watch the social media reactions together in real-time.

She doesn’t tell Antonio, but the next few days she keeps going back to re-read them. Her mind keeps going back to how his little joke is acknowledged by many people across Mexico, as well as beyond its borders. When she hears someone in the street mention it, her heart skips a beat, and she feels strange and giddy inside. She want to tell the person she was there when it happened, tell them how easy it had been, but Antonio has forbidden her from mentioning it to others. Over the following years, she grows increasingly competent in her own right, if a little haphazard.

One day, a group of young men with guns and tattoos come looking for Antonio. They drag him out and throw him in a truck. Sombra doesn’t intervene, and Antonio never returns.

But the men do. Two days later, they come back, asking if she knows computers.

She does.

***

There isn’t even a path leading up to the old warehouse. It is a nature’s alleyway, ragged, rocky walls guarding both sides, and ends in a large bluff that towers over the shoddy building. With its boarded-up windows and both the tin walls and the roof covered in rust, it is nicely camouflaged against the surrounding brown rock. Reluctantly, Sombra admits to being impressed with the location. If she didn’t know exactly where she was headed, she doubts she would ever have noticed it.

Sombra directs her hover-bike around the corner, dust whirling as she winds it down. She parks it close to the wall, taking care to conceal it behind a decently sized pile of old scrap that’s covered by a worn-down tarp. Not that she’s expecting a visit, but she knows not to take risks when they’re easily avoidable. She has been minimising risks for the last few years. Habits are hard to break.

The unexpectedly loud whine of the metal door cuts through the silence when she pulls it open. If anyone were here, that would have alerted them. But she knows it’s empty. Abrahán follows a rigid schedule, and doesn’t come here often. That’s why it took her over a week to locate this place. An eternity for someone used to the milliseconds of processors.

Once her eyes adjust to the relative lack of light inside, she is confronted with rows and rows of omnics. _Bingo_. There has to be at least seventy of them, all standing there in lifeless immobility. They certainly didn’t react to her opening the door.   
Sombra approaches the first row, examining them one by one. Looks like that loser had been right. This is not normal. A flick of her fingers, and they’re being scanned, one after the other, as she moves along the first line. The purple holoscreen that appears feeds her information about each one as she passes them. It’s a tool she’s assembled in only a few days, just some crude lines of code, but it serves its purpose well enough: To reveal the condition of the dormant omnics. She needs to find a good candidate, one that’s still functioning properly. Their state is apparently more of a coma than a sleep mode, and unfortunately, nearly all are damaged in some way. In some, she finds traces of interior corruption, and the majority of them have impaired exteriors - existing in Mexico is about as healthy for an omnic as taking a stroll through an active minefield.

She passes up several candidates, among them a short, humanoid omnic whose rounded top gives the impression of a shaved head. There are some exterior blemishes, but it still seems an ideal choice, until Sombra’s tool reveals extensive damage to its memory banks. No fixing that. She moves on to the next one. Also a bust.

Halfway along the second row, she finds the humanoid omnic’s duplicate, and it’s precisely what she is looking for. The diagnosis tells her all its sensory functions remain unimpaired, and there are no visible imperfections either. Perfect.

The neat device she pulls from her bag is no bigger than her thumb. Another quick, makeshift invention of hers, it won’t work wonders, but she’s confident it will get the job done. It travels back and forth between her fingers as she inspects the omnic. Eventually, she finds a spot to insert the small item: On the inside of its right thigh, there’s a small cover that she can pry open. A smart _click!_ confirms the device is attached, and she closes the cover again. There is barely any trace of her meddling.

The dust is dancing in the little light that filters through the broken windows near the roof. Hanging in the air is stark odour that she can’t quite place. Sombra sniffs. Is it from inside the omnic? Humans have blood, these robots must have some sort of bodily fluids too, she assumes. There’s bound to be some weird oils or something in there.

Dismissing the thought, she checks her holoscreen. _1%_. Her own code has begun to modify some of the operations of the omnic. The digit remains still, defiant against her stare. Eventually, it ticks over: _2%_. _Dioses_, it is slow. She knows omnics are different from computers, but nothing irritates her more than having to wait for slow technology.

With a sigh, she drops her bag and instruments at the omnic’s feet and decides to check out the rest of the omnics. 

She’s surrounded by them, all looking slightly different, unglowing eyes and mechanical limbs locked in position. Some of them look like they hail from India, with their specific forehead patterns, one is reminiscent of Europe’s standard Bastion units, and one looks strangely American, with a tilted cowboy hat atop its head, whilst-

Wait, _¿qué?_

Yes, it’s a large, brown cowboy hat, adorned with copper bullet casings. None of the other omnics are wearing any garments, so why is this one? The notion that something is wrong is immediate, but the thought that she is in danger does not strike her quickly enough. As she slowly starts to back away, she can sense - hear - movement behind her.

“Howdy,” a raspy, Southern voice resonates behind her back. “Now just where do you think you’re goin’?”

Like lightning she whips around and reaches for the gun she just realises she’s left next to her omnic, twenty meters away.

_Mierda_.

Face-to-face with a cowboy, an honest-to-God _vaquero_. He’s no more than three metres away. And more importantly, pointing a _ridiculously_ large revolver right at her chest.  
Where did he come from? And how did he get so close without her noticing? This place was supposed to be empty!

She stares at the gun for a full three seconds before her eyes move upward. He’s wearing a dirty rag of a poncho that only partially conceals some sort of body armour beneath. A grey glove is holding the gun without so much as a hint of a tremble. But despite his coarse beard and untidy hair, his face isn’t completely offensive to the eyes.

“Who are you, cowboy?” She needs leverage, and quickly. The English is unexpected, but she can work with it. Stalling is her only, and by definition therefore also best option. For now.

“I do believe I asked you a question first, miss.” He’s squinting in the darkness, but doesn’t blink. It’s unnerving, and Sombra is already on edge.

“I’m not answering until I know your name.”

“You just gave me one,” he says. “Now tell me, what are you doing here?”

“That’s a different question.” Her eyes dart around, taking in the surroundings. The only windows are at least four metres up, and he’s standing right between her and the only entrance she there is. _Doble mierda_. “And I’m thinking of how I’m getting out of here.”

He snickers.

“Oh, you’ll see.” She flashes her brightest smile back at him. “Tell me, are you one of his thugs?”

“Might be I’m a thug, but I’m my own. What gentleman are you referring to? If you don’t mind my askin’?” The revolver is still firmly pointed at her, his hand still not swaying. He is not asking.

“Abrahán Cruz, naturally. Your turn. What are you doing here?”

“Ain’t it obvious? I’m pointing a gun at you to get answers. This Abraham your boss or somethin’?”

Sombra laughs. “I’m self-employed.” She’d do many things to get what she wants, but pretend to work beneath a man like that, never.

“What’s your business here, then?”

“Abrahán is helping me out a bit.”

“So you’re in cahoots. Where is he?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know he’s helping me. In fact, I would say he’s past being useful to me. I could use a new… _amigo_.”

“Where is he?”

_Aha_. Repeating the question means there is something the cowboy is after. Means she had a bargaining chip.

“Not here, obviously. Were you expecting him? He won’t be coming back here.” A small bluff before she throws him the bait. “But fortunately for you, I know his exact location.”

“Then I suggest you tell me, miss, before my trigger finger starts getting antsy.”

Sombra observes him for a moment, silent. He coughs theatrically to get her attention.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I got distracted by your large… Gun. It’s hard to concentrate with that thing pointed at me.”

“You should tell me quick then.”

Her brows furrow. He isn’t very good at being played. Sombra hates that type.

“And let you shoot me after? No thanks.”

His revolver has six rounds. She can probably dodge the first easily enough. The following five, however, will be trickier. How good is his aim? Judging his skills before he has exhibited them is an impossible task, but going by his steady hand, she is likely so deep in _mierda_ she should be digging down rather than up.

“It wasn’t an offer. I could just shoot you first, and then go look for him myself.”

“Alone? With the people he owns? Pssh, good luck.”

“It’s what I do. And I’m good at it.”

“And how are you going to locate him, exactly?”

“Either you tell me, or I find him myself.”

Sombra realises he’s bluffing. If he’s really after Abrahán, she’s his best bet. He won’t shoot.

“Like you could,” she says, taking a step forward.

“Got here, didn’t I?”

“Oh, I’m sure Dorado loves helping out a snooping _gringo_. Maybe you could ask _Los Muertos_ for directions.” She takes another step towards him.

“I’m warnin’ ya, stay right there-”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” She keeps moving forward. You would have done that long ago if I wasn’t useful.”

_BANG!_

Sombra barely notices the gun moving but the impact of the bullet behind her is unmistakable. She swears she just felt something whizzing past her right ear, and raises her arm to make sure it’s still attached. _Damn. He’s good_. Worse still, she was wrong. He would shoot.

“Next one’s between the eyes,” says the man, and Sombra believes him. He won’t miss.

If she stands still.

She takes a few breaths, looking directly at him and pretending to be slightly more shocked than she actually is, which is both harder and easier than she wants it to be. _Cinco balas_.

“Fine. Fine. You win, I’ll tell you,” she says in her best impression of a _Muerto_ gangbanger about to piss themselves in fear, which admittedly, isn’t very close to the real thing. She’s seen the real thing.

With that thought comes the realisation that she knows can save her. A quick glance downwards confirms her good fortune.

“I’ve tracked Abrahán for weeks,” she begins. “He’s just left Dorado, but I happen to know exactly where he is headed: _Distrito Federal_.” The last place Abrahán would ever go is the capital, but she’s betting that John Wayne Jr. doesn’t know that. “Oh, and by the way,” Sombra adds with a casual nod to his waist, “Your fly’s open.”

As if obliged by instinct, he tilts his head down to check the zip for just a split-second before he catches himself, but that’s all the time she needs.

Like an unbound coil, she darts in behind the nearest omnic, just before he recovers and pulls the trigger. The loud bang and its intrusive entry into robotic innards echoes in her ears as she turns and swivels around the next omnic. _Cuatro_. She hopes she isn’t hit. At least her legs are working. Already she can feel him pursuing her, and she grabs a loose metal object, a can of some sort, and throws it behind her just as she can hear his gun go off again. _Tres_. With a _ping!_ the bullet ricochets off the metal husk of the omnic next to her and whatever she threw rattles against the concrete floor behind her. She grabs hold of a quadrupedal omnic’s leg and pivots around it, changing direction but maintaining momentum. Her ears are still ringing from the first gunshot, and she’s unable to hear her own footsteps. She turns around another omnic and keeps sprinting.

She has to keep out of his line of sight: That gun of his is dangerous, but only if he can see her. She’s moving towards the back of the warehouse, where there is even less light, and more omnics and scrap she can use for cover. Checking behind her quickly, it seems she has managed to escape his vision. She vaults a desk or something resembling one and crouches behind it, hidden from sight.

She’s catching her breath and listening for his footsteps when she realises she can’t hear any. Either he’s stopped moving, left her alone, or acquired the power of flight. Sombra reckons the last two are equally implausible.

Improvement: She’s not staring into the barrel of a loaded revolver.

Downside: She’s further from her own weapon since she started running.

She rubs her ear - her hearing is slowly returning, but there’s still no sound of him. That’s worrying.

Her hand rubs against something cold, metal, on the floor and she looks down at an old-time wrench. Its appearance marks it as less of a contemporary tool and more of an antiquity, but it’s solid and heavy in her hand as she picks it up. A hit to the head with that and they don’t get up again. Perfect. There are some screws and nuts lying on the floor that could also come in handy. Something resembling an idea forms inside her head. She grabs them too.

Sombra looks up from behind her cover, but cannot spot her enemy anywhere. She hopes it’s mutual.

She moves away from the protection of the desk she had been hiding behind, and sneaks her way past a couple of stationary omnics.

“Hey!” comes a shout, and she freezes. But there is no shot. He’s not close. Rather, he’s somewhere near the front of the warehouse, out of sight. “I’ve got your gun!”

_Shit_.

“Feel free to come out whenever you’re tired of fooling around back there! Let’s have another little chat,” he shouts. “I’ll be waiting.” A short pause. “With my revolver.”

Of course. _Idiota_. Of course he went to the only exit, where there are less omnics for her to hide behind and more space to wield that big gun of his. _Vete a la puta chingada_.

Nothing to be done about it. Her little plan could still work. Or she could improvise.

Quietly, she stalks forward along one side of the warehouse, going from omnic to omnic for cover, sticking to the shadows.

She finds him standing near the door through which she entered, and she’s peeking at him from behind a large omnic, far to his left. But the moment she makes a move he will in all likelihood catch her in his peripheral vision. She measures the distance to him in her mind. A couple of meters. She’s quick, but not that quick. Probably, she could get halfway to him before he could get a shot off. Not good enough. If only she could turn invisible at will. She fidgets with a screw between her fingers. Fantasising is no use. Her other hand is gripping the wrench tightly. She could throw the screw to the other side, and hope that he reacts to the sound. That would give her maybe two meters more. She weighs the wrench in her hand.

If only she hadn’t left her _pinche_ gun behind.

As Sombra evaluates her options, a decision is made for her.

The hack on the omnic is complete, which it happily informs the entire warehouse of via a loud _boop!_

Improvise it is.

The cowboy’s head moves towards the sound suspecting foul play, and seizing the moment, Sombra explodes forward from her hiding spot and hurls the wrench at him with every ounce of strength she can muster. There’s only one chance. He notices her, but Sombra’s aim is good, and he instinctively throws both his hands up to cover his face from the wrench. A metallic clang echoes as the tool is deflected away, and Sombra closes the distance between them and dives on to his revolver-arm to divert its lethal power.

“You _goddamn_-” he begins, but his curse turns into a grunt of pain when she drives a screw into his human arm, drawing blood, and the revolver falls to the floor with a gratifying sound. She immediately goes down after it, but his reflexes surprise her, and the metallic arm catches her shoulder with superhuman force. He is strong, too strong. And she is caught, struggle as she might. Seemingly without any effort, he lifts her into the air, despite her best kicking and punching.

“You cheat,” he says, holding her at arms length like one might a wriggling kitten. A minor annoyance. For a second she almost thinks she has lost.

But then she grins back at him.

“It’s not cheating if I win,” she says with a smirk as she places a hand on his omnic-like wrist, giving it a light tap. He can only watch, stunned, as his own limb betrays him, releasing its grip on her.  
As soon as she drops to the floor, her fingers close around the revolver, and she rolls over onto her back, grasping it in both hands and aiming straight up at him.

She pulls the trigger without hesitating.

BAM!

The recoil is horrendous, slamming her head back into the concrete and throwing the weapon out of her hands. The impact is hard enough that she would be seeing stars if it hadn’t been for the white explosion that has already stolen both her wind and her vision.

The floor ripples beneath her like waves at sea, and her head is spinning wildly out of control. She keeps blinking but can only see a blank nothing, and there’s a ringing in her ears blocking out all audible impressions. She heaves for air and tries to get up, but falls right back down again before she can regain her balance, nauseous beyond belief.

A sudden urge to puke washes over her, but she cannot do it, and then it goes away just as fast. Slowly, the whiteness fades to black as Sombra makes a futile attempt to stay conscious.

  
***

She can hear voices as she comes to, and it doesn’t worry her nearly as much as it should.

A moment passes, and then the door is kicked open. The sudden flood of evening sunlight blinds Sombra once more as she’s laying on her back, unable to move. Her whole body is aching, and there’s a terrible taste in her mouth, like she’s about to throw up. She lifts her head to get a better look at the intruders.

Two silhouettes appear in the doorway and they couldn’t be more different: One is big, rounded, with the posture of a sack of corn, and arms thick as logs holding some item whose metal chain jingles ominously as it is handled. The other one is thin, like a corpse, with spiky hair atop its head and a peg leg. It clung to the doorway for a moment, then almost bouncing, moves in an crouches right down over Sombra. Two small eyes examine her, and his face broadens into a broken and wicked smile.

“Ooh, what’s this?” he coos. “Think we’ve found ourselves a little thief, haven’t we, Roadie? She’s a real _doll_.” Sombra tries to rise up, but her limbs are impossibly heavy. The incredible effort she makes to get up is easily nullified by a slim, but surprisingly strong arm pushing her down again. Or is she that weak? “Sweetie, you’re not going nowhere ‘til we say so.” She wants to reply, come up with a witty retort, or at the very least punch his smug face, but nausea overwhelms her again. She would throw up on him, but can’t even manage that.

This day cannot possibly get any worse.

The big shape just keeps staring at the lines of omnics. “Where’s the gun?” he puffs with a hollowed-out, wheezing voice.

“Here it is,” says the slim shape, limping past Sombra and picking something up behind her head.

“Who she shoot?”

“Mate, I don’t know, can’t see no one but those tin cans. Maybe she was doing target practice.”

“Gotta be someone else here. Let’s find ‘em,” says the sack of corn.

“Why? They’ll explode with all the rest, why worry.”

A third figure enters the building. “You’re not touching anything until I am paid, remember that,” says a voice with a thick Spanish accent that Sombra has no trouble recognising. Even so, she turns her head slightly, just to get visual confirmation. Yep, Abrahán fucking Cruz.

“Don’t you worry about that, you’ll get what you asked for, that’s Junkrat and Roadhog guarantee!” Junkrat’s chuckle turns into a long laugh. “But first, we gotta figure out what to do about this one here…” He turns back to Sombra, who again tries to sit up.

“Nu-uh,” he says, and puts his peg leg on her chest, once more pushing her back against the ground.

“_Espera_, let me see,” Abrahán says. He moves Junkrat to one side and his face has to accommodate a massive grin. “I know her. You’ll get five percent off, if I get her.”

Junkrat - he really does resemble a rat - looks back and forth between Sombra, Abrahán and the one who has to be Roadhog, before bursting into a maniacal laugh.

“Mate,” he says as he recovers, “if I’d known you were that into purple hair, I’d have dyed Roadhog myself!” They all laugh.

Then Junkrat turns and smacks her head with the butt of the revolver and all goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been over two years since the seed that would become this story was born. Although small in comparison to other works, it has since, in the confines of my head, morphed and evolved past anything I could ever have imagined myself capable of producing. This is just an aperitif, and I hope to be able to offer you the full course before the year is out. There are at least another 9 chapters, and while the initial plan was to wait until they were all complete, yesterday's Overwatch 2 announcement was so exciting I couldn't contain myself. And here we are.
> 
> None of this would have been possible without the inspiration from my dear beta reader. I also want to mention [Hang the Fool](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7127210/chapters/16186526), which made me realise just how captivating fanfics can be, and fuelled my desire to create one of my own.
> 
> Disclaimer: I have not yet read the Overwatch comics. In fact, I’ve consciously stayed away from them in order to write this. Now I’ll finally get to see exactly how the canon breaks this story.


End file.
